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OPPORTUNITY 


An  Address  delivered  at  the  Dedication 

of    the    New    Library,    University 

of  Mississippi,  Tuesday  evening, 

May  30th,  1911 

By 

Robert  Burwell  Fulton 


J.  JAAB 


NOV  2  2  ■ 


The  Elm  Tree  Press    Woodstock  Vermont 
1911 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2013 


http://archive.org/details/opportunityaddreOOfult 


* 


Opportunity 


Mr.  Chancellor,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : 

It  is  good  to  look  again  into  the  faces  of  my  Mississippi 
friends,  and  to  grasp  again  the  hands  of  those  whose 
friendship  has  stood  the  test  of  time.  It  is  good  to  trust 
that  the  younger  generation  growing  up  in  this  great 
State  is  following  worthily  in  the  footsteps  of  worthy 
predecessors. 

State  pride  is  one  of  the  chief  bulwarks  of  our  Amer- 
ican Republic,  and  we  do  well  to  place  its  cultivation  next 
to  the  conservation  of  state  honor. 

In  the  old  plantation  days  of  my  childhood  in  Alabama 
I  heard  among  the  folk-songs  that  were  common  one  that 
had  in  it  a  peculiar  strain  of  patriotism  and  of  pathos. 
The  refrain  of  this  song  was, 

"  Oh  carry  me  back  to  old  Virginia's  shore." 

The  Virginian,  whether  master  or  slave,  who  drifted 
westward  with  the  tide  of  settlement  and  of  civilization  in 
the  earlier  years,  to  the  end  of  his  days  sang  this  refrain. 
Since  I  have  become  a  Virginian  I  have  learned  many 
reasons  for  this. 

A  beautiful  climate,  enchanting  scenery,  the  heritage 
of  a  noble  history  filled  with  honorable  achievement  and 
devoted  self-sacrifice  for  the  common  good, — all  conspire 
to  instil  patriotic  sentiment  that  is  strong  and  everlasting. 
In  quiet  dignity  this  grand  old  Commonwealth  knows, 


DEDICATION  OF  THE  NEW  LIBRARY 


though  she  does  not  boast  of,  her  services  and  her  vica- 
rious sacrifices.  Her  children  love  her  and  honor  her  for 
what  she  has  been  and  what  she  is. 

There  is  in  the  old  State  a  beautiful  expression  of  patri- 
otic sentiment,  in  words  that  go  from  heart  to  heart  like 
the  lines  of  Scotland's  poet  Burns,  which  all  good  Vir- 
ginians there  accept,  and  which  their  faith  makes  wholly 
true. 

The  words,  in  part,  are  these : 

The  roses  nowhere  bloom  so  white 
as  in  Virginia ; 
The  sunshine  nowhere  shines  so  bright 

as  in  Virginia ; 
The  birds  sing  nowhere  quite  so  sweet, 

And  nowhere  hearts  so  lightly  beat, 
For  heaven  and  earth  both  seem  to  meet 
Down  in  Virginia. 

Paraphrase  these  lines  by  writing  in  them  the  name  of 
your  own  great  State,  Mississippi,  instead  of  Virginia, 
then  believe  them  fully,  and  you  will  appreciate  Virginia 
patriotism  and  Virginia  character. 

Some  six  months  ago,  when  my  friend  Chancellor  Kin- 
cannon  expressed  the  desire  that  I  would  make  an  address 
on  the  occasion  of  the  opening  of  the  new  library,  and  in 
kindest  terms  referred  to  my  original  connection  with  the 
securing  of  funds  for  this  new  structure,  I  followed  the 
first  impulse  of  my  heart  and  promised  to  be  present  and 
render  such  service  as  I  might  be  able  to  give  for  my 
alma  mater. 

Possibly  you  can,  but  probably  you  can  not,  understand 
the  feelings  of  one  who,  after  an  absence  of  five  years, 
which  is  more  than  a  generation  as  time  is  reckoned  in 
college  life,  comes  again  to  the  scenes  that  were  familiar 
to  him  for  more  than  thirty  years,—  to  the  halls  in  which 


UNIVERSITY  OF  MISSISSIPPI 


he  lived  and  worked  as  a  student,— to  the  surroundings 
in  which  his  later  years  were  spent,— to  the  institution  in 
whose  service  the  best  energies  and  the  devoted  labors 
of  half  a  lifetime  were  loyally  given. 

Counting  the  years  of  my  personal  connection  with  the 
University  of  Mississippi,  as  student  and  as  officer,  I  hold 
the  record  for  length  of  service,  and  without  laying  claim 
to  infallibility  in  judgment  or  inerrancy  in  action,  I  yield 
to  no  man  in  the  conscientious  and  faithful  devotion  with 
which  I  served  my  alma  mater,  and  in  the  fervor  of  my 
love  for  her  honor  and  my  joy  in  her  advancement. 

You  will  pardon  me,  I  trust,  if  on  this  occasion  I  be- 
come somewhat  reminiscent  and  state  in  this  presence 
some  facts  which  should  not  be  obscured  by  the  recent 
splendid  development  here.  Through  recollection  of  the 
days  of  smaller  things  we  can  better  appreciate  and  more 
profitably  use  enlarged  opportunity. 

The  University  of  Mississippi  had  been  generally  pros- 
perous from  the  date  of  its  opening  in  1848  to  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Civil  War.  The  close  of  that  strife  left  it  with 
its  walls  intact,  but  with  no  funds.  A  noble  band  of  men 
undertook  its  rehabilitation.  A  body  of  youth  assembled 
in  its  halls  such  as  no  institution  in  this  land  had  ever 
enrolled.  Many  of  them  had  received  their  preparation 
for  college  in  the  armies  of  the  Confederacy.  The 
grass  had  not  grown  on  the  newly  made  graves  of  the 
seven  hundred  Confederate  soldiers  who  died  in  these 
buildings  used  as  hospitals,  and  who  sleep  their  last  sleep 
on  the  University  grounds.  The  era  of  reconstruction 
was  just  beginning.  Political  chaos  was  a  present  con- 
dition. The  University  of  Mississippi,  almost  solitary 
in  her  survival  of  the  ruins  of  the  War,  became  a  beacon 
of  hope  and  opportunity  to  the  young  men  of  this  and  all 
the  neighboring  States. 

The  proper  limits  of  this  address  would  be  exceeded  if 


6        DEDICA  TION  OF  THE  NEW  LIBRARY 


I  should  undertake  to  describe  the  motives  and  the  energy 
and  determination  with  which  the  student  body  of  that 
unique  period  worked,— ha d  to  work.  Free  as  they  were 
in  that  day  from  the  distracting  amusements  which  some- 
times lend  too  much  excitement  to  college  life,  and  urged 
by  the  grim  necessity  of  taking  up  their  life-work  in  a 
section  where  political  and  economic  chaos  prevailed, 
they  gave  themselves  to  the  grind  of  the  college  routine 
with  unremitting  perseverance,  and  through  persistent 
effort  developed  strength  and  power.  Neither  the  cata- 
logue of  the  University  of  Mississippi,  nor  that  of  any 
other  American  college  can  show  a  greater  proportion  of 
useful  and  distinguished  citizens,  or  an  abler  body  of 
professional  men  than  has  been  furnished  by  that  group, 
the  members  of  which  wore  the  gray  before  they  entered 
this  institution.  To  me,  a  younger  lad,  the  recollection 
of  my  association  with  these  men  will  always  be  a  source 
of  pride  and  inspiration. 

In  that  pristine  day  the  grounds  and  buildings  of  the 
University  bore  little  resemblance  to  the  present  large 
expansion.  The  campus  was  bounded  on  the  east  by  a 
fence  extending  southward  from  the  east  end  of  the 
Observatory.  Outside  of  that  fence  the  landscape  was 
occupied  by  a  thicket  of  black  jack  oaks,  which  by  their 
green  leaves  in  summer  and  their  brown  leaves  in  winter 
effectively  cut  off  all  distant  view.  The  central  part  of 
the  Lyceum  building,  three  dormitories,  two  double  resi- 
dences and  the  Chapel,  occupied  seven  sides  of  an 
octagon,  and  these,  with  one  residence  back  of  the 
Lyceum,  the  Observatory  and  the  present  Taylor  Hall, 
completed  the  university  group.  These  had  all  been 
erected  before  the  Civil  War,  and  afterwards,  until  1889, 
during  a  period  of  nearly  twenty -five  years,  the  institu- 
tion was  not  able  to  erect  a  single  new  building  for  its 
uses,  nor  to  spare  a  single  brick  from  any  of  the  old  ones. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  MISSISSIPPI 


During  this  period  every  department  suffered  from 
narrow  and  insufficient  accommodations,  and  no  depart- 
ment more  than  the  library.  From  the  days  preceding 
the  War  it  had  been  domiciled  in  the  third  story  front 
rooms  of  the  Lyceum  building.  The  book  stacks  filled 
these  small  rooms.  A  member  of  the  Faculty  acted  as 
librarian.  The  library  in  my  student  days  and  long  after- 
wards, was  opened  for  students  once  a  week,— two  hours 
on  Saturday  afternoons.  At  this  weekly  opening  a 
student  could  borrow  one  book  at  a  time.  Library 
research  work  was  practically  unknown.  Very  few  new 
books  were  bought. 

Under  the  administration  of  Chancellor  Edward  Mayes 
the  library,  for  the  first  time,  in  the  building  erected  in 
1889  and  used  since  that  time,  became  available  as  an 
instrument  for  education,  and  began  to  take  its  proper 
place  of  importance  and  influence  in  the  work  of  the 
University.  Within  a  few  years  the  need  for  larger 
quarters  again  became  manifest. 

The  period  from  1892  to  1902  was  an  era  marked  by 
unprecedented  educational  advancement  throughout  the 
State  of  Mississippi,  and  by  such  growth  and  development 
in  all  departments  of  the  University  as  emphasized  on 
every  side  the  need  for  larger  quarters. 

It  is  a  fact  that  for  twelve  years,  from  the  year  1880 
when  the  legislature  adjusted  the  indebtedness  of  the 
State  to  the  University  and  arranged  for  the  payment  to 
the  University  annually  of  the  sum  of  $32,643.00,  as  inter- 
est on  this  indebtedness,  to  the  year  1892,  the  University 
received  only  this  fixed  annual  sum  from  the  State. 
Under  these  conditions  growth  beyond  small  limits  was 
impossible. 

I  shall  always  regard  as  distinctly  providential  the  fact 
that  when  I  began  the  duties  of  Chancellor  in  1892  the 
discovery  came  to  me  that  Mississippi  had  never  received 


8       ■  DEDICA  TION  OF  THE  NEW  LIBRARY 


from  Congress  for  the  University  the  full  portion  of  the 
public  land  which  Congress  when  the  State  was  organized 
intended  to  give.  The  prosecution  of  this  matter  brought 
to  the  State  four  townships  of  land  for  the  institutions  of 
higher  education,  and  has  turned  into  the  State  treasury 
over  $600,000.00,  as  proceeds  from  these  lands.  The 
University  sold  only  the  timber  on  her  share  of  land,  and 
still  holds  the  land.  The  experience  of  other  States  and 
other  state  institutions  convincingly  shows  that  this 
institution  should  never  part  with  the  title  to  this  increas- 
ingly valuable  domain. 

The  annual  income  of  the  University  was  increased  by 
about  $10,000.00  from  the  sale  of  the  timber  on  this  land. 
But  what  was  this  amount  among  so  many  and  such 
rapidly  increasing  needs  ? 

The  co-ordination  of  the  work  of  the  University  with 
the  general  educational  system  in  Mississippi,  which  be- 
gan in  1893  and  has  continued  to  this  good  day  with 
increasing  efficiency  and  continually  enlarging  benefits, 
was  undoubtedly  the  most  important  action  taken  within 
fifty  years  for  educational  uplift  and  advancement  in  the 
State. 

It  was  virtually  the  application  here  in  Mississippi  of 
the  principles  advocated  by  Thomas  Jefferson  regarding 
public  education,  which  principles  have  been  adopted  in 
practically  all  the  States  formed  out  of  the  Public  Domain, 
and  with  most  beneficent  results.  The  later  co-ordination 
of  the  institutions  of  higher  education  in  the  State  under 
one  general  control  marks  another  distinct  step  towards 
educational  efficiency. 

I  will  not  tax  the  patience  of  this  audience  with  a  full 
narrative  of  the  labors  and  trials  which  accompanied  the 
efforts  to  secure  funds  for  purposes  rendered  necessary 
by  the  growth  of  the  University  in  the  period  of  its  ex- 
pansion from  college  to  university  proportions  in  its  work. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  MISSISSIPPI 


It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  in  this  period  it  had  its  full 
share  of  M  growing  pains." 

A  brief  statement  regarding  the  beginning  of  the  move- 
ment which  has  culminated  in  the  erection  of  the  beautiful 
and  commodious  building  whose  dedication  to  library- 
uses  we  celebrate  this  evening  seems  to  be  needed  in  the 
interest  of  historical  accuracy. 

On  February  7, 1905,  while  Chancellor  of  the  University 
of  Mississippi,  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie  inquiring 
whether  he  would  consider  a  request  to  donate  a  library 
building  to  the  University.  Receiving  an  encouraging 
reply  from  Mr.  Carnegie's  Secretary,  I  at  once  addressed 
to  each  of  the  seventeen  members  of  the  Board  of  Trustees 
of  the  University  a  letter  setting  forth  the  fact  of  this 
overture  made  by  me,  and  asking  the  personal  consent 
of  the  members  of  the  Board  for  me  to  proceed  with  the 
negotiation.  I  received  from  ten  of  the  members  of  the 
Board  responses  indicating  that  they  were  heartily  in 
favor  of  the  procedure.  These  responses  were  in  writing, 
and  were  the  only  ones  received.  In  accordance  with 
this  expressed  hearty  approval  of  a  majority  of  the  Board 
of  Trustees  my  correspondence  with  Mr.  Carnegie  was 
continued,  and  resulted  in  his  definite  offer  to  pay  for  a 
library  at  the  University.  This  offer  was  made  in 
response  to  my  request,  after  I  had  secured  the  consent 
of  a  majority  of  the  seventeen  members  of  the  Board 
of  Trustees,  and  had  received  not  a  single  unfavorable 
reply  to  my  letter  addressed  to  the  members  of  the 
Board. 

When  the  next  regular  meeting  of  the  Board  was  held, 
on  June  4,  1905, 1  made  a  statement  of  the  case  in  my 
annual  report,  and  offered  resolutions  covering  the  formal 
acceptance  of  the  donation.  To  my  great  surprise,  the 
Board,  after  considerable  discussion,  ten  members  and 
the  Governor  being  present,  by  a  vote  of  seven  to  four, 


10       DEDICATION  OF  THE  NEW  LIBRARY 


rejected  the  donation.  There  was  nothing  to  do  but  let  the 
matter  rest. 

To  the  excellent  tact  and  good  judgment  of  Chancellor 
Kincannon,  no  less  than  to  the  kindly  disposition  of  Mr. 
Carnegie,  the  University  is  indebted  for  the  rectification 
of  this  unfortunate  tangle,  and  the  creation  of  the  greatly 
needed  enlargement  of  opportunity  which  this  beautiful 
library  building  brings. 

What  of  the  man  whose  generous  donation  we  on  this 
occasion  receive  ? 

Mr.  Whitelaw  Reid,  American  Ambassador  to  England, 
in  speaking  at  the  opening  of  a  public  library  at  Luton, 
England,  last  October,  said : 

"  But  first,  perhaps  I  might  say  something  about  your 
new  citizen  (Mr.  Carnegie),  since  he  is  my  countryman, 
and  since  I  have  known  him  rather  well,  and  a  long  time, 
without  knowing  much  to  his  disadvantage,  excepting 
that  in  spite  of  his  liking  for  libraries  his  spelling  is  de- 
plorable. Naturally  my  attention  was  arrested  by  a 
reference  to  him  which  I  happened  to  hear  the  other  day, 
as  I  passed  that  point  of  high  thinking,  or  at  least  high 
speaking,  the  corner  of  Hyde  Park  near  the  Marble 
Arch.  What  I  heard  set  me  to  thinking. 

"  The  orator  was  discoursing  about  the  plunderers  of 
honest  toil,  and  he  pictured  your  new  citizen,  not  too  in- 
distinctly, as  one  of  the  worst  of  them,  a  man  who  had 
amassed  a  great  fortune  out  of  profits  that  rightly  be- 
longed to  the  working  men  he  employed  and  cheated, 
and  who  was  now  doling  out  a  little  of  it,  in  trivial  and 
useless  ways,  merely  to  gain  a  cheap  reputation  for 
philanthropy.  Well,  I  remembered  that  Mr.  Carnegie 
had  always  paid  good  wages,  paid  promptly,  and  found 
new  employment  for  many  men,  as  well  as  that  the  only 
serious  disagreement  that  ever  occurred  there  between 
employers  and  employes  was  without  his  knowledge 


UNIVERSITY  OF  MISSISSIPPI  11 

and  when  he  had  been  absent  for  months  on  another 
continent. 

"  I  also  remembered  that  he  had  been  something  of  a 
working  man  himself,  that  he  began  as  a  weaver's 
lad  in  a  cotton  factory,  was  next  a  messenger  boy  in  a 
telegraph  office  and  profiting  by  that  opportunity,  picked 
up  the  art  himself,  and  he  thus  worked  his  way  into  a 
railroad  office,  and  so  up  until  he  became  a  railway 
superintendent,  next  a  successful  manufacturer  of  rail- 
way iron,  and  that  he  had  the  far-seeing  sagacity,  courage 
and  indomitable  persistence  to  introduce  the  Bessemer 
steel-making  process  in  America.  Recalling  all  this  I 
could  see  better  where  the  fortune  came  from  than  where 
the  plunder  came  in.  Then  I  took  another  look  at  the 
orator  who  had  pronounced  that  surprising  indictment. 
He  didn't  look  or  talk  like  a  man  who  had  much  claim  to 
speak  for  decent  working  men,  or  had  often  done  an 
honest  day's  work  himself.  In  fact,  he  looked  like  what 
the  hard-headed  but  irreverent  working  man  of  my 
native  land  is  apt  to  call  a  '  jaw-smith ';  and  he  was  then 
apparently  plying  the  trade  by  which  he  earned  his  un- 
clean wage." 

After  referring  to  the  work  of  the  trustees  of  Mr. 
Carnegie's  Hero  Fund  and  citing  many  instances  where 
heroic  self-sacrificing  service  to  humanity  had  received 
generous  recognition,  Mr.  Reid  says  : 

"  Perhaps  the  man  who  finds  heroes  like  these,  helps 
them  out  of  their  difficulties,  and  preserves  them  or  their 
children  for  further  service  to  the  race,  does  more  for 
labor,  and  for  all  classes  than  the  one  who  stands  on  a 
box  in  Hyde  Park  and  bawls  out  to  a  crowd  of  curious 
idlers  every  unreasonable  and  bitter  phrase  he  can  think 
of,  to  make  his  hearers  hate  and  envy  anybody  more 
thrifty  and  more  useful  than  themselves." 

These  words  were  spoken  by  a  distinguished  and 


12       DEDICA  TION  OF  THE  NEW  LIBRARY 


well-informed  American  citizen,  in  England.  I  have  my- 
self carefully  studied  the  evidence  in  the  Congressional 
investigation  of  the  Homestead  labor  troubles,  and  have 
noted  the  general  purposes  and  methods  of  Mr.  Carnegie 
in  disposing  of  his  wealth.  I  can  form  no  fairer  judg- 
ment than  that  expressed  by  Mr.  Whitelaw  Reid. 

As  an  example  of  what  one  man  may  do  in  grasping 
and  using  a  great  opportunity  for  advancing  civilization 
and  producing  material  wealth  for  mankind  the  achieve- 
ments of  Mr.  Carnegie  are  unique  in  the  world's  history. 

Among  oriental  peoples,  and  in  Europe  down  to  the 
time  of  the  discovery  of  America,  and  later,  what  may  be 
called  the  bullion  idea  of  wealth  prevailed.  A  man's 
wealth  was  by  preference  invested  and  reckoned  in  inert 
gold  and  silver  and  precious  stones.  The  discoverer  of 
America,  and  the  adventurers  who  followed  him,  gen- 
erally undertook  to  reap  a  golden  harvest,  without  pro- 
ductive labor,  and  to  carry  back  the  captured  gold  and 
silver  of  Incas  and  Montezumas. 

The  first  French  settlers  on  the  coast  of  Mississippi 
were  commissioned  by  the  King  of  France  to  hunt  for 
pearls  and  the  wool  of  the  wild  buffalo.  They  produced 
nothing  through  skill  or  industry.  Their  undertaking 
failed. 

Where  gold  and  silver  abounded  America  was  first 
exploited,  and  each  adventurer  seized  what  was  available. 
Then  came  the  period  when  fortunes  could  be  found 
in  furs  and  pelts,  and  from  these  sources  wealth  flowed 
to  the  Hudson  Bay  Company  and  to  the  Astors. 

As  population  increased  and  settlements  extended 
transportation  by  water  and  by  rail  afforded  opportunity 
which  the  Vanderbilts,  Goulds,  Harrimans  and  Hills  were 
not  slow  to  seize. 

Archaeologists  and  historians  have  marked  human  ad- 
vancement by  speaking  of  man  as  living  in  the  stone  age, 


UNIVERSITY  OF  MISSISSIPPI  13 

the  bronze  age  or  the  iron  age,  according  to  the  means 
which  he  had  learned  to  adapt  to  his  needs  and  uses.  On 
this  scale  the  last  thirty-five  years  mark  the  real  begin- 
ning of  the  age  of  heat  and  electricity  and  steel.  All  of 
us  have  a  consciousness  of  the  wide  and  marvelous  uses 
of  electricity  which  have  come  about.  Comparatively 
few  appreciate  the  vast  improvements  in  the  production 
of  power  from  heat,  and  it  requires  still  further  thought 
to  realize  what  part  steel  has  played  in  the  unprecedented 
industrial  development  of  the  last  third  of  a  century. 
The  use  of  this  material  has  rendered  practicable  the 
construction  of  railroads,  buildings,  bridges,  steamships, 
machinery  and  appliances  that  form  the  physical  basis 
of  a  civilization  which  would  without  these  be  impossible. 

To  Mr.  Carnegie  America  and  the  world  are  indebted 
more  than  to  any  other  man  for  the  intelligent  courage 
which  seized  a  great  opportunity  and  has  supplied  the 
world  with  a  structural  material  better  and  cheaper  than 
any  other,  and  has  made  this  the  age  of  steel. 

In  1874  the  production  of  raw  steel  ingots  in  the  United 
States  amounted  to  91,000  tons.  In  1909  the  production 
for  the  year  amounted  to  24,338,000  tons,— an  increase  of 
over  two  hundred  and  fifty  fold  in  thirty-five  years  in  the 
production  by  scientific  processes  of  a  material  which  the 
world  needed  and  was  eager  to  purchase.  Is  it  a  matter 
of  surprise  that  prosperity,  or  wealth,  should  have  come 
to  those  engaged  in  this  vast  manufacture  of  useful  and 
needed  material  ?  Favorable  tariff  legislation  by  Congress 
was  a  mere  incident  that  may  have  hastened,  but  did  not 
produce  this  development. 

The  man  whose  liberality  has  made  possible  the  build- 
ing which  we  this  evening  dedicate  to  noble  uses  has 
given  away  to  his  fellow  men  more  than  $175,000,000,— 
not  in  indiscriminate  and  enervating  charity,  but  with 
definite  purpose,  and  in  each  case  after  careful  inquiry 


14      DEDICATION  OF  THE  NEW  LIBRARY 

and  reasonable  assurance  that  the  gift  will  be  properly 
appreciated  and  used  for  the  betterment  of  mankind. 

This  is  colossal  philanthropy  which  matches  in  senti- 
ment the  ideals  of  Abou  ben  Adhem  and  in  practical 
results  the  zeal  of  Zacchaeus  the  rich  man  of  Jericho. 

What  an  illustration  of  the  greatness  of  opportunity  in 
America,  and  the  magnificent  improvement  of  oppor- 
tunity, is  presented  in  the  life  of  this  man ! 

An  humble  Scotch  immigrant  boy  has  become  able  to 
give  away  millions,  and  has  earned  the  title  bestowed 
on  him  by  the  representatives  of  twenty-one  American 
republics, — Benefactor  of  Humanity. 

Let  no  young  man  say  that  the  day  of  great  opportunity 
in  America  has  passed.  There  are  problems  yet  to  be 
solved,  social,  spiritual,  political,  economic  and  scientific, 
as  great  as,  and  even  greater  than  the  world  has  already 
known,  and  honors  and  emoluments  and  the  gratitude 
of  mankind  await  those  who  advance  civilization  and 
benefit  the  race  by  their  solution. 

May  this  library  ever  be  a  source  of  knowledge,  in- 
spiration and  power  that  shall  continually  furnish  high 
ideals  and  lead  to  large  and  noble  achievement. 


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